AuthorTopic: Earliest Memories (Read 12241 times)

Hmm, I grew up in the Fort Worth area, so things have changed a great deal since the early 80's when we went from first to third generation freeways here. I remember the when the new interchange between I-35W and I-20 was rebuilt from a cloverleaf to a 5-level stack. My cousin and I called the ramp from 20 west to 35w north "the rollercoaster" because it seemed so high up. I remember when 20 was just a four lane freeway with red pavement. I guess my most memorable stretches of rural interstate would be I-45 between Dallas and Houston and its endless construction; I guess when I was younger it was being reconstructed from Sheperd to the Beltway then from the Beltway to 1960, but the stretch from the Woodlands to the Hardy Toll Road had been reconstructed because of the Hardy Toll Road. Most recently the stretch from the Woodlands to Conroe opened up. I would also say that CA 17 between San Jose and Santa Cruz was very memorable as a boy from the grasslands of Texas.

My earliest memories have to be along the Pennsylvania Turnpike when I was 3 to visit my family. I remember I had my Matchbox cars with me, and I pretended something road-related about them. That was when I realized I love roads.

I remember getting strapped into the carseat so that my mother could drop me off at my grandmother's house for the day while she went to work, and I was quite aware of features along the road the way we went. That was when I was three years old. The dating aspect here: this carseat was in the front passenger seat, where I loved to sit so I could see out the windsheild and watch the road go by. The car we had at the time didn't have airbags, so putting the carseat in the front wasn't a problem. Today, you couldn't do that anymore.

As for the earliest "road trip" I have any memory of, that would have to be when we went to Sesame Place and subsequently to Strasburg, PA. I would have been six, maybe seven at that point. This was the first driving vacation my family ever went on. The vivid memory of this trip which is most amusing today is of my father pulling into a gas station (it was a Hess station) and subsequently pulling right back out, complaining that the prices were ridiculously high. I want to say they were charging maybe $1.60 a gallon.